


I may be a twin but I'm one of a kind

by ser_atlantisite



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ben Lives, Flirting through blood loss, Fluff and Angst, Other, he shows up later in person i promise, it got angstier wOOPS but at least ben is here now, season 1 remix
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-01 22:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17252780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ser_atlantisite/pseuds/ser_atlantisite
Summary: "So, Detective... Your brother...""What about him?""I don't know. Tell me about him. I am trying to distract you after all.""You'd like him. Everyone does."+Snippets of Juno and Peter's relationship in a world where Benzaiten is healthy and happy





	1. 2 Mask 2 Murderous

**Author's Note:**

> im pretty sure a big part of why peter was so open to juno so quickly was beCAUSE, on paper, juno had no one to tie him to Mars. Peter cant appreciate the subtle bonds that link people or places, so he went in to this "relationship" thinking juno was as unattached as he was. So what happens when juno is not?

"...and in chair number two, Junooo Steel, private eye. Detective Steel has lost just about everything a person can lose; his career, his friends, and even his own _mother_. Doesn't it just tear your heart out?" Cecil paused for fake gasps of shock.

Chains rattled as Rex Glass twisted. "What? Juno —"

"Don't say _anything_ ," Juno ground out. His face was burning, and it wasn't just the poison makeup. _Fuck you Cecil_.

"All he has left in the world is his _dear_ baby brother. Will that bond be enough to motivate Juno Steel tonight, viewers? Or does this thirty-eight-year tragedy end here, and now, without so much as a goodbye? Let's find out!"

Beyond the floodlights and the torture machines, the silhouette of their host leaned away from his comically large microphone. "Note to self," he said, words much fainter now, "schedule Benzaiten Steel for next week's episode. Nothing says 'touching tribute' like a special challenge-round for the surviving sibling."

Juno lunged for Cecil, despite the chains crushing his ribs. Rex was pulled back with him, skulls cracking together hard. The pain rattled in his teeth, but he didn't care. "Don't you _dare_ touch him Cecil!"

Glass gasped. "Juno—"

"I swear to god you batshit crazy piece of work if you so much as _look at him-_ "

"Juno the blades!"

Cecil's laughter echoed over the whir of the death trap above them. "Looks like our dear detective has already found my little _twist_..."

 

+

 

"So, Detective... Your brother..." Rex cradled Juno's injured arm delicately, long fingers brushing over the wound while trying to decide where to start.

"What about him?"

"I don't know. Tell me about him." Juno hissed as his sleeve was peeled back. "I am trying to distract you after all."

"You'd like him. Everyone does." He leaned back against the wall, so he wouldn't have to look at his arm.

Instead he saw Benten, Mr. Bright Smiles and Easy Laughter, all friendly warmth. He saw Rex turn his flirty charm onto _everyone's favorite Steel_ and the two of them hit it off immediately. Well, not quite. Benten was friendly but he wasn't an idiot. He would side-eye all the flattery and look at Juno like ' _Where the hell did you find this guy?_ ' before turning back and cracking a joke, and Rex would laugh, flash that smile and forget Juno was even there...

Juno felt nauseous.

"Is he a hardened detective like yourself?"

"Naw. Dance instructor. Damn good one."

Rex paused and glanced up at him. Without his sunglasses there was nothing to protect Juno from the dazzling, mischievous gleam in his eyes. "I don’t suppose any of his talent happened to rub off on you?"

Juno was dizzy, and hurt, but Rex’s fingers were soft, and those eyes were just so bright he was having a hard time thinking about anything else. "I… picked up a thing or two over the years. I guess," he said, despite himself. Rex's slow, delighted smile lit up his face, made him radiant. "He practiced at home a lot ok? And sometimes it was one in the morning and he needed a partner and—shut up!"

"I haven't said anything!"

"You didn't have to." Juno glared at the floor, hoping the heat would fade from his cheeks.

"You will have to show me sometime, detective." He didn't have to look up to hear the _grin_ in Rex's voice.

Juno huffed. “If you’re a good enough partner, maybe I will.”

Rex chuckled. “Now that’s incentive if I’ve ever heard it,” he goddamn _purred_ and Juno decided that was worth it. The stitching device began buzzing away.

"You are very protective of him..." Rex sound smaller, somehow. Muted. It must have been the blood loss finally catching up to Juno.

"He's the only family I've ever had."

"What about your mother –"

Juno flinched out of Rex's grip. The device clattered to the ground. "Don't."

"I'm, sorry detective. I didn't mean to pry. I just..."

He focused on Rex's delicate fingers, hovering in the air between them before withdrawing back to his side. Those few inches felt like miles. Juno swallowed. " ‘member how I said mother never killed me?”

“Yes.”

“Well she came damn close with Benten. Too close. I was almost too late to..." he clenched his jaw. Why was he saying any of this? Stupid brain and its stupid need of the stupid blood currently all over his coat, and those damn eyes he could feel on him. "It never should have gotten that far."

Rex didn’t say anything to that. In fact, he had gone very, very still.

_Good job Steel, you freaked him out. Why can’t you just –_

"I..." Rex sat up straighter, the hand on his thigh clenching. "Surprisingly enough detective, I understand that sentiment. Too well." His voice was flat. Controlled. Their gazes met, and Juno's breath caught. There was something… raw, staring back at him from those bright, bright eyes. Rex’s smirking confidence was gone – the man in his place stared at Juno and his gaze burned.

Juno opened his mouth to say something. Swallowed, tried again. But Rex broke the spell first, looking away to collect the device and pull a roll of bandages from the first aid kit. He looked back to Juno and whatever that moment was, _whoever_ had slipped out was gone, buried again. Rex had back that quirk to his lips even as he gently asked for Juno’s arm to finish. He deftly wrapped it up, and then the burn on his own  hand that Juno had totally forgotten _he_ was at fault for.

“You’re pretty good at this, Glass.”

His smile was simple. “I’m a man of many talents, Juno.”

“I’ll bet you are…”


	2. Angel of Brahma

_“Benten. Not picking up either, huh? I’m on a… a case. I guess. I don’t know how long this’ll take, or…” A sigh, a soft thump. The next words were muffled. “He says he needs me to trust him, Benten, but he didn’t even tell me what I was supposed to be doing at that table. I’m not even sure who he_ is _, let alone..._

 _“Am I wrong here? You’ve said it yourself a hundred times – I don’t trust people. He’s the one person where that’s probably the smart thing. It was last time. But I_ need _to trust him right now. Hell, I needed to last time too, and I think… I think I want to. Dammit, I think I…” An angry huff this time. “Yah this is stupid. I’m starting to sound like I’m in junior high. Ok I’m going to hang up now. I’ll just…go back in there. How awkward can it be? I only yelled at him and went through his stuff while he was out of the room which I’m pretty sure is the damn honeymoon suite, not that I would know because he won’t just tell me_ anything _–_

_“Right. Hanging up. Don’t call me back, the next few days are going to be a mess. Just. Take care bud. And, if you were ever going to visit those old dance halls on Earth, I hear its lovely this time of year._

_“Love you.”_

 

That was the end of the message.

Benten dialed Rita faster than he had done anything in his life.

 

+

 

“…That resort Mistah Steel called us both from, in Olympus Mons? Turns out he was stayin’ there under the name _Dahlia Rose_. With his _husband_ Duke Rose!”

Benzaiten Steel slumped forward in his chair, running a hand over his face. “Anyone we recognize?”

“You remember Agent Rex Glass? The thief pretendin’ to be from Dark Matters and—"

Benten grimaced. “Yah, Juno mentioned him. So, where the hell did they end up?”

“Well the Roses met with some old thief named Engstrom and then security found a body in their room the next mornin’ –”

“What?!”

“Ya gotta let me finish a sentence here Mistah Benten. You said you wanted to know all of it so I’m telling you all of it,” Rita scolded. Benten stood and started pacing his kitchen, moving appliances, tearing dead leaves off plants. He was too wound up to just sit. The boss got like this too, but usually with more grumping and less bouncing. “So, they found a body of some thug workin’ for Engstrom, not officially mind you but no one ever thinks to look where I do, and then Mistahs Steel and Glass disappear from all the feeds till they steal Engstrom’s car from one of the garages and then they drove out of the resort like their hair was on fire and all these other cars start chasin’ them just like Tommy Nova in ‘Fast n Furious Warp Speed’, and then I… _lost them in the desert._ ”

Benten stilled and turned to stare at her, eyes wide. Rita shrank back in her seat.

“Well there ain’t no cameras in the desert and Mistah Steel left those comms in the hotel room. That’s just like him to leave his comms, I’m always tellin’ him Boss ya can’t—"

“No, no _no no_.” Benten grabbed the kitchen table across from her, clutching the edge so hard he felt the synth-wood give, leaned towards her. “Rita _please_ that can’t just be it. I—Juno’s always saying you’re the best at this, t-that you can just open a computer or look at a thousand numbers and get anything from anywhere. There’s gotta be something else!”

Rita might have gushed at the compliment if she didn’t look so frazzled. “That’s the last place I can find them, I swear. A few hours later Engstrom was arrested off somethin’ called the Utgard Express which is a real dangerous train – it took forever to even find that much let me tell you – and he was sayin’ all these things about being kidnapped by Mistah Rose and Mistah Steel which is horse feathers because he left that hotel way before they did and I made sure the security team knew that too, and I also took Mistah Steel’s name off their reports, though not like they’re gonna do anything about it because if anyone knew someone had cracked the most secure vault in the system they’d have a lot of scary rich people breathin’ down their necks and they might even end up dead—”

“Rita—”

“—but anyways Engstrom said they were gone when he woke up. So then I was in the Utgard security servers and they musta cut that hole in the side of the train and jumped for it when it slowed down only they swept the area and there was no sign of anyone there. Well, the second team swept the area. The first team kinda… exploded.”

Rita finally stopped for breath, red faced and starting to tear up. She turned her laptop around to show him – a dozen images of train tracks, scattered wreckage, and miles of empty red desert. No sign of anything.

“Ok,” Benten muttered. He ran his hands through his hair and bounced back a couple paces. “Ok, so what next?” Rita just shook her head miserably. “No, no come on, Juno’s told me this a million times. You, you go back and look at old clues with the new info, right? So, this Rex guy kidnapped my brother and took him to Olympus Mons for, what? Whatever it was, it was important, a—and, um…”

“That’s what I’m tryna tell you. There’s nowhere else to look. I’ve checked Dark Matters and they have less on Rex Glass than we do, and all the radiation and iron in the desert makes their satellites useless for trackin’ anythin’ after so long. And the only thing missing from the train hasn’t turned up anywhere.

“I can’t find him,” she said, crying now. She sounded so small, so far from the Rita he knew.

A week’s worth of dread settled in Benten’s chest, around his throat like a noose, threatened to crush him under its weight. He looked at the monitor, and the blurred image of his brother, brilliant, stubborn, human-disaster Juno Fucking Steel, ducking into the stolen car with his smooth-talking criminal crush.

He couldn’t breathe.

He should have made Rita start looking right away. He should have called Sasha the second he heard that voicemail. _He shouldn’t have lost his phone in the couch in the first goddamned place_.

He stumbled back into the cabinets and slid to the floor, folding in on himself. Because he couldn’t lose it. He wasn’t the one being hurt, being yelled at. He was safe at home while Juno was god-knows where going through god-knows what. And he couldn’t do anything about it. Again.

_“Where the hell are you Juno?”_

 

+

 

_“It’s very simple Juno Steel. If the thief isn’t enough motivation to continue, I’ll have your twin brought down here and we can continue from there instead.”_

Those words echoed through Juno's skull, louder with each throb of his head. He should be sleeping but he was scared to dream and just… scared. She hadn’t even batted an eye. That had been the first time Peter hadn’t told him to ignore her and rest, and when Juno reached out to read the next card there had been one thought clear as day – _“She won’t touch him, Juno. We can do this.”_

Juno’s mind, worn down like it was, kept offering up images of Benten in this tomb with them, strapped into that chair and Nureyev just... gone. That thought alone left him more nauseous than did playing jump rope with his own brain. Miasma’s threats were lazy, and constant, and really nothing Juno hadn’t heard before from bigger thugs, but he was just so goddamn tired and strung out. He had nothing left in him, couldn’t even pass out properly, so how could he protect the two men he loved most in this forsaken rock of a planet?

He pulled Nureyev impossibly tighter against him and breathed a silent apology into his thief's chest. As long as Nureyev was here, he was hurting, but it meant Benten was safe. Ideally Miasma would be dead, or maybe on a one-way rocket into the sun, he wasn’t picky, and they would all be safe far away from here. But in the meantime...  
In his sleep, Nureyev breathed deep and even, steady and warm in Juno’s arms. The ‘tests’ made it hard for the thief to lie down easily, but he wrapped around Juno like it was worth everything.

_“We’ll get through this, Juno,” he had said._

_“You sound pretty confident,” he said back._

_“Haven’t you been paying attention darling? We can do anything together.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me "wow benten sure is a fun character it'll be great to write him"  
> my hand *writes tHAT*
> 
> if i redid Day That Wouldn't Die he'd have a lot more jokes but this. is what it is. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Author's Note:**

> honestly i thought peter wasn't going to share his name until the second date in this universe but then juno said that thing that hit peter right in the repressed memories
> 
> *first penumbra fic in 2019!!


End file.
